


Hanging with the Raisin Boys

by misura



Category: Primeval: New World
Genre: Community: smallfandomfest, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2018-04-07 19:23:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4275099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>And so, once again, there's milk in the fridge and a box of cereals containing too much sugar and not nearly enough nutritients on top of it.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hanging with the Raisin Boys

**Author's Note:**

  * For [missyvortexdv (Purpleyin)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Purpleyin/gifts).



> prompt: _Evan/Ange, repeating history_

She doesn't ask, _what happened?_ when he comes knocking on the door to her apartment at three in the morning (it's not night when you've been lying awake planning out your day).

He doesn't reply, _I don't want to talk about it; you'll find out first thing tomorrow at work anyway_ , which would be incorrect, regardless: Ange has a tablet and knows how to use it; she'll probably find out during breakfast, or on her way in.

 

And so, once again, there's milk in the fridge and a box of cereals containing too much sugar and not nearly enough nutritients on top of it.

Two days ago, neither one was present in her kitchen. Ange prefers to get her breakfast in the shape of fruit, a smoothie, perhaps, if she plans on going out for a run and has the time to make one. She enjoys her dairy in the form of yogurt.

Five weeks from now or maybe six, the milk will be gone. The cereals will dwell a bit longer, until they take to wandering, to the cupboard, to the shelf above the microwave, before finally, she'll throw them out, feeling angry with herself for putting it off for so long.

Evan will have thrown himself into some new project. He'll seem happy, content. He'll attend meetings, keep promises, dazzle prospective clients with his charm and wit and intelligence - likely as not, he'll be absent once the negotiations start in earnest, once they're starting to talk about cold hard numbers that have nothing to do with the mathematical lay-out of the universe, but that first favorable impression will still be lingering, adding its weight to Ange's arguments.

At the same time, his presence in her apartment will slowly fade away. He'll work late, absently shake his head when she slips into his office to ask if he's ready to leave yet.

Ange won't miss him. Evan Cross is many things, some of them positive, but he tends to make a mess, creating chaos in an otherwise perfectly ordered apartment, an otherwise perfectly planned out career.

 

He doesn't say, _I love you_ , even though she might believe that he does, in this one moment. There's always going to be affection between them, of course, the sort of friendship that comes from mutual trust and a certain amount of respect - they're both geniuses, in their own respective fields, even if Ange's genius generally only gets noticed by her peers, her colleagues, her competitors.

She doesn't say, _I love you, too_ , even though she might believe that she does. There's nothing else to explain why she still sticks around, really, spending her time managing a small-time tech corporation and a big-time technological genius.

(And maybe one of them is lying, has lied the last time they were here and did this, to the other and to themselves, or maybe they're both simply telling the truth as they know it.)

 

Brooke had always been Evan's big love. His one chance, Ange thinks, at a life with at least a semblance of normalcy. Where most people see in Evan Cross a man driven by his wife's death, Ange simply sees a man whom life has been permanently thrown off-balance by removing one of the two great counterweights that kept his life hanging on the edge.

The balance always was precarious, of course.

It's where the guilt comes from. Present Evan with a scientific mystery on one side and Brooke on the other, and it's fifty-fifty odds either way. It might have gone either way, and in nearly every situation, it wouldn't have made any big difference in the long run.

Albertosauri are like bags of Chinese take-out food with pot stickers: you never see the first one coming, but once it's happened, you can never go back.

 

She says, _I need you to finish this prototype and present it in two weeks_. It's the simplest possible presentation of the facts. As a negotiation tactic, it would be terrible; as an earnest request between friends, she feels it should be enough.

He says, _yes, I know - I'll get right on that, just give me a couple of hours to finish this thing I'm working on first, all right?_ , which is better than if he'd asked _sorry, what prototype are we talking about again?_ but not by much. They've been here before, and if Ange kept score, she'd give up right now, shut down her computer and go home to make herself a smoothie.

 _Hours,_ she says. _Not days, Evan. You know what's at stake here, don't you? We need this contract to work._

 _I know,_ he says. _Ease off, will you? I'll get it done. Trust me._

 

The crazy, stupid thing is: she does trust him.

The not-crazy, completely logical and as-expected thing is: he doesn't finish the prototype.

 

She shouldn't take it personally, of course; simply because he avoids her at work and dodges her calls, that doesn't mean his feelings have changed. It's annoying, yes, and childish and maddening and frustrating, because more than anyone else, Ange knows that Evan Cross is a genius.

The fact that he's also on occasion an idiot doesn't change that.

After all, when it comes to him, she's kind of a fool, too.

(The only difference between her and him is: at least she's aware of her condition, of the way it influences her work, her life. It makes it easier to keep telling herself she's going to leave, one day, get a new job and forget about all of this, Evan and his projects and the smell of Chinese take-out.)


End file.
